Jewish Settlers Try Friendly Persuasion

Jewish settlers in the West Bank are resorting to friendly persuasion to convince local Arab leaders to take a hand in ridding the territory of Palestinian terrorists released in the May 20 prisoner exchange.

A delegation of settlers from Elon Moreh, near Nablus, yesterday visited the Arab village of Deir el Khatab to urge the mukhtar (village leader) to make sure that freed terrorist Samir Saleh Yussef departs. Yussef was convicted on December 2, 1980 of murdering an Arab suspected of collaboration with Israel. He was serving a 25-year prison sentence when he was among the 1,150 Palestinians freed from Israeli jails in exchange for three Israeli soldiers held captive by a Palestinian terrorist group in Damascus.

Some 600 of the released convicts were allowed to return to their homes in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel. Jewish settlers in the territories are determined that they leave. At least three are known to have fled to Jordan after several days and nights of harassment and threats by settlers.

The settlers are now employing peaceful means, to avoid intervention by the security forces, but mainly not to spoil the chances for the early release of alleged members of a Jewish terrorist underground presently on trial or serving sentences for acts of violence against Arab civilians.

A spokesman for the settlers told the mukhtar of Deir el Khatab, Suleiman Mustafa Abdul Karim, “We come to you as friends.” But there was an underlying threat of violence as the spokesman added, in broken Arabic, “We are telling the residents of the village that there are those among us in the Jewish settlements who will not remain idle if the released terrorist does not get out of here. We want to avoid unpleasantness and to maintain good neighborly relations,” he said. The settlers came to the village apparently unarmed, except one of them who openly carried a gun. He was identified as Avner Uzan. He wore a yarmulka with the symbol of Rabbi Meir Kahane’s extremist Kach Party which advocates the expulsion of all Arabs from Israel and the territories regardless of whether or not they are guilty of crimes.

The settlers have the names of the released Palestinians, obtained from the International Red Cross which participated in the prisoner exchange. The mukhtar told the visitors politely that he would convey their demands to the family of Yussef but that he was in no position to force the man to leave his home.

The settlers went to Yussef’s home to be told by his brother that he had gone to the Jordan valley. They said they would return to make sure he had left.

NO INTERVENTION BY SECURITY FORCES

Security forces in the West Bank have not intervened so far in the settlers’ drive to oust released terrorists. But sources in the defense establishment called their tactics childish.

Meanwhile, one of the terrorists freed on May 20 and re-arrested three days later for allegedly inciting against Israel in a local mosque, was released yesterday by order of a Jerusalem magistrates court after he promised not to engage in anti-Israel activities. The man, Mussa Awda, had been serving a life sentence for murder. He has since returned to his home in the Silwan quarter of East Jerusalem.